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In his article, "The Tax Man Goeth", Charles Stone sounds like just another Republican apologist rather than any sort of libertarian. Let's analyze what he's written:

"How would [a national sales tax] help? ... Because it's not an additional tax. It replaces the Federal income tax..."

Right... I suppose Mr. Stone still believes in Santa Claus, too. The people proposing this are the same who lied the country into an immoral and unnecessary war, telling so many whoppers that they make even Bill Clinton look like a paragon of honesty. They're the same people that have been wiping their asses with the Bill of Rights for over three years now. Only a fool or a knave would claim they can be trusted.

There will, of course, be a transition period in going from the income tax to a national sales tax, during which we will have both taxes.

How much do you want to bet that this transition period won't end during our lifetimes?

"Is it possible to get enough money to run the government through such a system?"

Why in the world would a libertarian want the Feds to have enough money to run their organization? Does Mr. Stone worry about the Mafia having enough income to run their organization?

"The underground economy that now pays no income taxes would suddenly be paying their share."

That Mr. Stone considers this a good thing is most telling. Another phrase for "the underground economy" is "the free economy," i.e., that portion of it which has managed to escape government control. Furthermore, the very notion that everyone should pay their "fair share" of the tax burden is a statist one; would Mr. Stone lament the fact that not all women suffer their "fair share" of the rape burden in this country?

"Every household would receive a stipend equal to the the sales tax the would pay on the necessities. Every household."

Whether or not they actually paid such taxes? This sounds like another income redistribution plan to me. And another monstrous bureaucracy.

And another way for the Feds to exert ever more control over the lives of Americans. There will, of course, be strings attached to this stipend. How long before it will be denied to divorced fathers accused (rightly or wrongly) of not paying child support, or to parents who don't follow a federally approved program of education for their children, or to parents found not to have federally approved trigger locks on their guns, etc.?

"Would there be cheaters?"

You mean, would there be patriotic Americans who would find the courage and means to avoid funding the most anti-American organization on the planet, one that robs from, defrauds, and enslaves Americans on a massive scale, and seems bent on destroying everything that ever was good and noble about this country?

After reading Charles Stone, Jr.'s article, "The Tax
Man Goeth," I have to wonder if Mr. Stone woke up next
to a pod this morning.

OK, that was somewhat mean, but I find it painful to
see such a respected member of the freedom movement
endorsing this plan.

Some of what he says, I have no problem with. It may
very well cause an economic boom, and it certainly
will save preparation costs. What really set me off
was this sentence:

"The underground economy that now pays no income taxes
would suddenly be paying their share."

Excuse me??? What is this "share" thing you're
talking about?? Do you mean to tell me that we're
supposed to just hand over our wallets to the nice man
with the gun? That when the collectors and sharers
come around, we're not supposed to resist, even in a
small way?

<twitch>

OK, I'm calm now.

Next, we get into the the bribe portion of the fair
tax plan. You got it, as a victim of universal
goverment robbery, you get a check backsupposedly
to reimburse you for the tax on basic necessities, but
the real effect will be to make most people dependent
on that monthly government check. Hmmmm.... Sounds
suspiciously like welfare to me...

Will goods be cheaper with the fair tax plan? Maybe
notafter all, many of the goods we buy are not
manufactured here, but overseasno break on income
tax, no price reduction.

What about sugar, dairy products and other government
price controlled items? Since they are already
inflated due to government interference, they aren't
going to come down much, if at all.

Also, there is another pointthe punitive tax. The
fair tax plan makes it one step easier for the feds to
put that 200%, 500%, or even 1000% tax on ammunition,
guns, SUVs, fatty foods, and anything else that they
feel you shouldn't have. Without it, they would have
had to be far more blatant by making a special tax.
Now, they can just go ahead and add it to a special
schedule of items with increased taxation.

Oh, and by the way: Will the Fair Tax Plan eliminate
income tax? Read the following paragraph:

"SEC. 905. (a) IN GENERAL All persons, in whatever
capacity acting (including lessees or mortgagors or
real or personal property, fiduciaries, employers, and
all officers and employees of the United States)
having control, receipt, custody, disposal, or payment
of any income to the extent such income constitutes
gross income from sources within the United States of
any nonresident alien individual, foreign partnership,
or foreign corporation shall deduct and withhold from
that income a tax equal to 23 percent thereof."

In other words, an Income Tax.

To recap:

1. The fair tax plan puts every American household on welfare.

2. Imported goods and price controlled goods will not be reduced in price.

3. Fair Tax plan makes it easier (and since we're
dealing with government here, almost certain) to put a
punitive tax on items that the feds don't like.

4. The Fair Tax plan has a mechanism in place to implement an income tax.

Oh, and should anyone think that I should come up with
a better idea, here it is: Abolish witholding, pay
everything in full on tax day with no partial payments
allowed, and move tax day to the last week in October.
I want taxpayers to go into the voting booth with
blood in their eye. <evil grin>

Good article as always. And timely to recent events here in the LPNMjust
recently, I ran off another such clown who kept insisting that the ZAP
"doesn't apply" to the issues of the day.

At first, I tried playing nice, but no dice. So then I let loose. The
first time this clown left us was on 13 Dec 2004. He was apparently
"talked back" by a county chair, only to leave in another snit 60 days
later (12 Feb 2005).

Go to the LPNM Forum [ http://www.lpnm.org/forum ] and look for posts
by "nosweets54" and you'll see exactly what I'm talking about.

Shades of Eric "the Shake" Dondero.

And concerning the bill written by "Mike" that would re-legalize
select-fire rifles as long as they were manufactured in-state 

So What?

This was (and still is) a feel-good measure on the part of the
proponent. First, full-auto isn't really a good thing on such a rifle
as full-auto isn't as accurate as semi-auto, and tends to waste
ammoI'd rather have a detachable sound suppressor at the least, and maybe
a 40-mm grenade launcher.

Second, and more important, building your own "ugly black"* military-
pattern semi-auto rifle was pretty easy, even under Waco Willie's 1994
ban. I should knowI put together a semi-auto CAR-15 / M-4 in 1997,
with flash-hider and telescoping stock, from new parts. Now that the
1994 ban has expired, it's even easier to make your own.

Hi. I take what I'm hoping my friend Wendy will interpret as
good-natured exception to her characterization of the butter
knife incident as "an innocent mistake," in her thought-provoking
essay on the handcuffed and felonious children.

Wendy notes, "Zero tolerance has spread through society largely
due to the reasonable fear with which people have responded to
the school shootings at Columbine and the still-stunning tragedy
of Sept. 11. The fear is reasonable."

I disagree. I think the fear is unreasonable. Why fear a butter
knife? Why is it any sort of mistake for a child to carry a
butter knife to school? Why is it any sort of a mistake for a
child to have scissors at school, or allergy medicine, or lemon
drops, as some "zero tolerance" victims have been punished for
possessing? There is no reason for an armed people to be afraid.
Only the slave, disarmed because she is feared by her masters,
needs to be afraid of what she cannot easily defend herself against.
Fear arises not from reasoning, but from being denied the tools
that thinking people have created for addressing sources of danger.

There is another term for "zero tolerance." Intolerance. It is
also called "bigotry." Why should hoplophobia be tolerated?

The proper response to the school shootings at Columbine and
elsewhere is the closure of all public schools, the end of all
property taxes, the default on all related bond issues, and the
private or home schooling of children as the children themselves
or, in the unlikely event of incapacity on the part of the child,
the parents feel is the best way for learning to take place. It
is high time we separate school from state, as Marshall Fritz has
been telling us (http://www.sepschool.org/). It is high time we
take children seriously, as Sarah Fitz-Claridge has been telling
us (http://www.takingchildrenseriously.com/).

But, failing the closing of all propaganda mills and the outlawing
of publicly funded education, along with all forms of theft
associated with it, schools should return to basic American
traditions of liberty. Children and teachers should keep and
bear arms. There is nothing wrong with having a butter knife in
one's dinner pail or lunch box, nothing mistaken about scissors,
or medications, or guns. When I was a student children brought
guns to school for show and tell, sometimes with a parent for
further elaborations on gun safety and sometimes not.

Armed teachers at Columbine would have been in a position to
defend the children on campus without having to wait for the
SWAT team to come to grips with its duties. Armed students at
Columbine would not have been easy targets for murder, and would
likely not have put up with the kind of aggravation that jocks
seem to have an endless appetite for meting out against others.
An armed society is a polite society, as Robert Heinlein taught.
What is a school if it is not a society? And why shouldn't its
members be armed?

It is a mistake to yield any ground on this issue. Children
are the future. Children should choose how their lives are
run. Coercing children leads to more coercion in the future.
These are fairly obvious matters. Even a child can see them.

Bigotry and fear of weapons is the problem with zero tolerance.
Taking a butter knife to school to cut up fruit and avoid
problems with braces is not a mistake, innocent or otherwise.
Once we yield the ground on which the Bill of Rights was
written, the bloody ground of places like Lexington and Concord,
we can expect to be handed a generation of ignorant slaves by
the public school teachers.

Freedom, as our glorious leader L. Neil Smith points out, is
under attack because we haven't been fighting the culture war.
Columbine was caused by a culture which calls for medicating
creative children with psychosis-inducing drugs, disarming
parents, teachers, and children alike, and forcing everyone
through an indoctrination camp for twelve long, boring years.
It is in the nature of some jocks to make life miserable for
some geeks, and in the nature of some geeks to be vengeful
about it. Forcing these disparate groups together, forcing
non-parents to pay for the school athletic programs through
taxes, and generally allowing our freedom to be diminished
through cultural retardation are not irreversible problems.

Recognizing these problems, though, is the first step in
redressing them.